Soviet Union

India

A cordial relationship with India that began in the 1950s
represented the most successful of the Soviet attempts to foster
closer relations with Third World countries. The relationship began
with a visit by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the
Soviet Union in June 1955 and Khrushchev's return trip to India in
the fall of 1955. While in India, Khrushchev announced that the
Soviet Union supported Indian sovereignty over the Kashmir region
and over Portuguese coastal enclaves.

The Soviet relationship with India rankled the Chinese and
contributed to Sino-Soviet enmity during the Khrushchev period. The
Soviet Union declared its neutrality during the 1959 border dispute
and the 1962 Sino-Indian war, although the Chinese strongly
objected. The Soviet Union gave India substantial economic and
military assistance during the Khrushchev period, and by 1960 India
had received more Soviet assistance than China had. This disparity
became another point of contention in Sino-Soviet relations. In
1962 the Soviet Union agreed to transfer technology to coproduce
the MiG-21 jet fighter in India, which the Soviet Union had earlier
denied to China.

In 1965 the Soviet Union served successfully as peace broker
between India and Pakistan after an Indian-Pakistani border war.
The Soviet chairman of the Council of Ministers, Aleksei N.
Kosygin, met with representatives of India and Pakistan and helped
them negotiate an end to the military conflict over Kashmir.

In 1971 East Pakistan initiated an effort to secede from its
union with West Pakistan. India supported the secession and, as a
guarantee against possible Chinese entrance into the conflict on
the side of West Pakistan, signed a treaty of friendship and
cooperation with the Soviet Union in August 1971. In December,
India entered the conflict and ensured the victory of the
secessionists and the establishment of the new state of Bangladesh.

Relations between the Soviet Union and India did not suffer
much during the rightist Janata Party's coalition government in the
late 1970s, although India did move to establish better economic
and military relations with Western countries. To counter these
efforts by India to diversify its relations, the Soviet Union
proffered additional weaponry and economic assistance.

During the 1980s, despite the 1984 assassination by Sikh
extremists of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the mainstay of cordial
Indian-Soviet relations, India maintained a close relationship with
the Soviet Union. Indicating the high priority of relations with
the Soviet Union in Indian foreign policy, the new Indian prime
minister, Rajiv Gandhi, visited the Soviet Union on his first state
visit abroad in May 1985 and signed two long-term economic
agreements with the Soviet Union. In turn, Gorbachev's first visit
to a Third World state was his meeting with Gandhi in New Delhi in
late 1986. Gorbachev unsuccessfully urged Gandhi to help the Soviet
Union set up an Asian collective security system. Gorbachev's
advocacy of this proposal, which had also been made by Brezhnev,
was an indication of continuing Soviet interest in using close
relations with India as a means of containing China. With the
improvement of Sino-Soviet relations in the late 1980s, containing
China had less of a priority, but close relations with India
remained important as an example of Gorbachev's new Third World
policy.